Deep, Dark & Gorgeous

It’s dark, really dark—the kind of dark that makes it hard to see shadows while playing with your mind; provoking you to presume that things are there that might not be. Something on the cold stale ground sparkles a few yards away. Of course. They’re toenail clippings. Sparkling a creamy, almost fluorescent, yellow is a small pile of toenail scraps that look like strategically placed crescent moons trying to provide a speck of light in this musty black alleyway of the earth.

There must be a hot dog stand near by because through the stench of raw flowing sewage, there is a delightful flutter of Hebrew National franks roaming around, seeking attention. Those hot dogs smell good enough to provoke a hungry man to accost an innocent passerby and possibly take a monstrous bite out of the stranger’s arm. Those goddamn toenail clippings kill the mood though; make you forget about simple things like hunger and hygiene. They bring you right back to this tectonic asshole formed at the ridge of two plates: society and me.

A thick constant stream of smoke, or maybe it’s steam, piles out of a an open manhole. Like an old woman whose had her fair share of late night adventures in the realm of sexual deviance, this gaping hole swirls gorgeous spirals of smoke into the sky like some kind of ritual she performed after an intense orgasm experienced in a dirty motel far away from her and her husband’s place of residence. That smoke is entrancing. It forms pictures over the dark backdrop and fingers you to come dance; fall in its arms; slide down its body; penetrate its core. It’s so thick. Like a child who sees snow for the first time, you want to run through it and totally immerse yourself. There are those goddamn hot dogs again. They must have another batch brewing.

Why do humans do this? They make this perfectly industrialized piece of earth their own and then forget about it. The meandering cracks in the beaten asphalt tell their own stories of what they’ve seen and how good the old days were even though now they are old and falling apart. Some dead grass pokes through some of the cracks; just a couple blades—nothing to write home about. I guess it’s making an effort but it has been overtaken; conquered; forgotten.

A soft breeze keeps sporadically rolling buy. It’s nice because it moves the smell of rank sewer mold down the way but it keeps bringing those goddamn hot dogs. Something’s dripping. Thank God—it’s a distraction from those delicious wieners. Looks like water but it’s black—like the kind of black that blood exudes after it dries on a lightless basement floor following countless months of being ignored. It’s got a nice rhythm—a little uneven but there’s a method to its madness. If Schubert wrote songs with an eyedropper and a mason jar of liquid, this is the melody he would choose. Not only does the gloomy water bathe the air with its song of loneliness, it’s also making a pretty sizeable puddle that’s starting to run amok. Little offshoots of slowly streaming liquid roll around in a snakelike fashion, looking for your dry shoe if nothing else. Just like everything else in this godforsaken place, these glistening lost trails are here and nobody knows it. It’s like all facets of melancholy and grime converged to take over this one place and make it their own; it’s drab and depressing. It’s gorgeous.